March 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on Tech blog item #8: Repainting the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

“Circulation is down. Ad revenue is down. Staffers are facing week-long furloughs, yet again. There are whispers that USA Today is in trouble. The classifieds business is pretty much gone. Newspapers are dying. The broadcast business isn’t much better. Even the company-backed Newseum is a disaster.”

That quote was taken from Mark Potts’ latest blog post and I think that it speaks for itself. The question that now remains is, what to do about that now? Not only that but, what’s Gannett, a leading media and marketing solutions company, going to do?

The focus of this blog post is Pott’s opinion on the stupidity of this company and how changing the slogan to, “it’s all within reach,” gains nothing. It also doesn’t make up for laying off most of the company’s designers in a cost-cutting move.

Instead of the millions used to change this sloganand logo, these dollars could have been used to keep Gannett staff from being fired, or to help create new innovations that benefitted the company. Or why not hire a few more reporters for the company?

As Potts says many times in this blog post, “this is not so smart” at all.

According to Mark Potts, he has been noticing something about his news consumption over the past few months. While he rarely has looked at newspapers the past few years, and rarely looks at newspaper Web site home pages and consumes a huge amount of news via RSS feeds and Twitter, one site has emerged as his go-to “front page” for news. That is, Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog.

Apparently Sullivan’s blog has been drawing interest from many people. In fact, it has been the biggest traffic draw on The Atlantic’s Web site, accounting for fully a quarter of its traffic. That has to say something! Also, journalist Tina Brown has now taken Sullivan to be an anchor for her “every-more-interesting” Daily Beast/Newsweek hybrid.

According to Potts, Sullivan’s blog is very well put together, includes an old-school front page, and has an engaging smorgasbord of news, with commentary, that provides readers with a guide to a wide range of topics. What more can you ask for here?

Could it be possible that people could completely ditch their newspapers for blogs like Andrew Sullivans? If people want to see their news in a new and different way, why not start here?

March 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on Video Conference Story #1: Dan Rather and Tucker Carlson

Journalist and former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, along with political news correspondent Tucker Carlson, appeared in a C-SPAN video conference with George Mason University. Both guests answered questions from students ranging from the current situation in Egypt to their careers in the media.

Rather stressed the importance of determination in young journalists and the ability to write well and quickly. He also emphasized that “curiosity is the bedrock of being a good reporter,” and it is absolutely necessary for young people to be interested in journalism. They must be able to relate to the emotions of the American people, while still striving for objectivity and putting up a strong front when needed in times of great uncertainty.

Rather went on to discuss the Watergate scandal and the assassination of President Kennedy, both events of which he covered in his tremendous career. At the time of the assassination, the media had “tremendous differences” compared to today’s media. Now, the dominant source of information in the Internet, while back then it was radio and television. We have so many more channels of information available to us today- you experience news almost everywhere. Television may be on the back-burner for many, but Rather says it’s strength is that it “can take you there.”

Regarding Nixon’s presidency, Rather said, “In America, presidents are not sun gods.” Rather stressed the importance of our political heads to be treated with “equal justice under the law,” exactly as every other person in America should be treated.

When asked about the current situation of news and reporting in the United States, Rather said, “American journalism needs a spine transplant!”

Carlson agreed with this statement, and argued that American journalists are “unwilling to take on figures of authority.” This can be seen with the Iraq War and former President Bush’s theory for ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ We as journalists need to weed out the ‘fishy’ information from the rest and dive deep into investigative journalism techniques to discover the truth behind big issues.

Carlson also stressed that each individual reading the news has a responsibility to sort out the information and decide what is fact and what is fiction. Believing everything that you see or hear is a huge fallacy that so many people commit.

Having the opportunity to participate in such a great conference with Mr. Rather and Mr. Carlson is something I will always cherish. As a journalist, I look forward to living by Mr. Rather’s words: “I’ll do my lead-level best to get as close to the truth as I can.”

With social networking tools and blogs embedded on news sites, conversing the news is possible. One can converse through comments or social networking (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.). This can enable tremendous ways to communicate and collaborate with the audience, despite potential problems due to anonymity. The benefits to news as a conversation include:

1 percent of the user community — including the journalists on news sites — actually create content

10 percent of the user community will “synthesize” the content by posting a comment, e-mail, blog post or a link from a separate site.

100 percent of the user community will benefit from actions of the first two groups.

Some of successful Web sites that utilizes user-generated communities are Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube. User-generated communities do not cost money. However, it takes a great amount of time, energy and resources to build the sufficient community for the purpose. Major tasks for creating user-generated communities include:

Evangelizing the brand

Soliciting the content

Moderating comments, blogs and other user submissions

Solving user problems

Staffing booths at weekend events

Running contests to drive traffic

Some of ways to keep your user-generated communities clean and safe:

Don’t editorialize

Consider if public disclosure of someone close to you may become embarrassment to them.

March 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on Project Storyboard

Our project’s goal is to recover NAMI Northern Virginia history and present it interactively. We will conduct interviews with past board members, do research about the institution, and gather information about its history. We will be using different online platforms to organize and present the information.
Our project will be constructed around an interactive timeline. We’ll be using dipity to create it. We’re planning to use YouTube to post our videos, but they also will be linked to the timeline. We will use batchgeo to create a Google map, and point the locations and programs offered by NAMI Northern Va. The map will be linked to the timeline. Slideshows, scanned documents, and other images will also be linked. We will use social media to disseminate the information we produced, and to reach out to NAMI NOVA already established audience on Facebook.

My role within the project is to create the timeline. I will gather all the information about the organization’s history and bring it all together to be put in a horizontal timeline dating from NAMI NOVA’s creation to its current state. I will do most of the research but other members of the group will also do some research and send it to me to put into the timeline. I will also be assisting with the writing component and social media.

March 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on C-SPAN Video Conference with George Allen

Energy reform is one of the top platforms Senate hopeful George Allen brought up in a recent video conference.

Allen, who served Virginia as a Representative, Governor and Senator over almost two decades, joined students participating from the George Mason University Video Studio along with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-SPAN networks, and students from the University of Denver to discuss his upcoming Senate run and his 2010 book “What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports.”

“Oil and gas, we have it in this country,” Allen said. “We ought to let states like Virginia or others explore off the coast and share 37-and-a-half percent of the royalties with the states. In Virginia, we could use that money for roads.”

According to Allen, approximately 41 percent of the ballooning national deficit in 2010 was due to foreign oil trade, and he estimates that that figure has only increased. Allen reiterated that the United States does not need to bring in national gas from outside sources.

“[The United States] need[s] to be the world capital of innovation,” Allen said. “We need to work with top quality, less waste, greater efficiency and using technology and productivity.” He suggests that the country adopt techniques to ensure that we use our resources as wisely as possible.

“Some people may consider it blasphemous but we can learn from the French when it comes to nuclear [energy],” Allen said. “They get about 70 percent-plus of their energy from nuclear. What they do is a much safer, less dangerous, more efficient approach. They recycle; they reprocess that fuel. Our country, nuclear’s impediment beyond its enormous capital cost is what do you do with the spent fuel?”

Allen discussed how, in 2009, the Obama administration effectively shut down the country’s designated national depository of nuclear materials in Yucca Mountain, Nev. which means the United States’ 104 reactor sites must store their own waste.

“I don’t know any community who really thinks that’s a great idea,” he said. “I know darn well that if the French can [recycle nuclear waste], so can Americans.”

Allen also spoke of diversifying the energy supply utilized in order to boost the economy and provide jobs for Americans, in turn making the country more competitive. He talked about how the EPA has carbon dioxide regulations that no other countries have to deal with, another energy policy that ultimately hurts the U.S.

“We really can get our economy jumpstarted, make our country more competitive, keep money here at home and most importantly, keep jobs here at home by utilizing the blessings of our plentiful resources,” he said.

The distance learning course, which is produced by C-SPAN, is a unique opportunity for students to interview guests via video conference. The course airs on C-SPAN3 on Fridays at 5 p.m. and also streams online (http://www.c-span.org/Distance_Learning/). The interview with George Allen can be viewed here.

March 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on Tech blog item #6: Smart stuff

The period of September through December was a dry one for Mark Potts. There were no blog posts on his “Recovering Journalist” blog because he was just plain tired of “repeating himself over and over again.” He must have a point because sometimes, you just run out of things to talk about.

However, his main reason was that he was more and more frustrated by the media industry’s inability to make the fundamental changes in product, technology and business model that are needed for survival. He claims that the shift from traditional media to digital continues at a rather slow pace.

Mark Potts’ advice to the reader is to click these posts by a couple of the smarter people on the subject of the future of media:

And John Paton, the smartest newspaper executive of all (mostly because he refuses to define himself as a newspaper exec), with a progress report on the massive changes he’s pushing through at once-moribund Journal Register. (If you want the summary version of John’s presentation, Matt Ingram has it here.)

My advice is to read these posts from these two journalists, and as Potts would say, “if you care about the future of journalism and the media business, you have to read and learn from them. They’re telling the truth about what’s happening and what desperately, urgently needs to happen.”

March 7th, 2011 · Comments Off on Briggs chapter 10: managing news as a conversation

According to Briggs, now that news is a conversation, one of the greatest challenges facing journalists is how to manage, and leverage, that conversation. To prove Briggs’ point, it is best to bring up a quote from one of the most famous journalists of all time, Edward R. Murrow.

“The speed of communication is wonderful to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.”

Today, Murrow’s observation has been truer than ever. According to Briggs, even journalists feeling overwhelmed by new technology can see that more interaction with the audience carries big benefits. However, every opportunity creates questions and challenges:

How do journalists participate in the conversation without sacrificing their objectivity or credibility?

What about legal and ethical issues now that everyone can publish anything they want on a professional news site?

And what happens when you really want the audience to participate, but they don’t?

This chapter addresses those questions and how many people focus on the idea that a future in journalism means managing online communities and participating in various social networks. That’s part of it, but a huge part of news is managing it as a conversation and its outcomes.

We’re really looking forward to having you all in Minnesota this weekend for Steve’s memorial service. Below are details for the weekend. Please e-mail Mike at mwesleybuttry@gmail.com if you have any questions. Friday There has been a CHANGE in Friday evening’s plans. We ended up having too many people for bowling at Pinstripes (a good […]

The LSU Manship School of Mass Communication will also be holding a memorial service in honor of Steve at 4:30 Monday, April 3 at the Holliday Forum in the LSU Journalism Building. Further details are in the link below. Buttry Memorial Service

We’d like to thank everyone again for the continuing love and support we’ve received since Steve’s passing. This post is to remind and provide some more details for Steve’s memorial service, which will take place at 4pm, Saturday April 8, at the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Minneapolis, MN. Directions to the venue are also […]

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‘Tis the season for an endless stream of party invites, personal obligations, and a mad dash to meet end-of-year goals. While the holidays challenge professionals to disconnect and tune in to family time, they also present more stressful responsibilities and etiquette recommendations to follow. One of the most tried and true traditions is the act […]

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